Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Not too long ago, my constituency colleague Deputy Ward and I met with approximately one third of the school principals in our constituency. Those people represent 20 separate schools of all types of patronage and children of all ages. The purpose of the meeting was to ask the principals about they face. Every one of those principals stated that they had permanent contracted positions in their schools that they simply could not fill. A number of schools had as many as three contracted positions that they could not fill. Not only could they not get permanent teachers, they could not even get substitute teachers because of the difficulties with staffing. When we asked them to explain the single biggest problem when it comes to getting staff they said it was the cost of accommodation. It is simply impossible for young people to get either rental or purchase accommodation anywhere within commuting distance of the constituency of Dublin Mid-West. When we talk to gardaí, healthcare assistants and nurses, it is the same story. The simple reason is that after 12 years of Fine Gael in office, people cannot afford to rent or buy a home. House prices are higher than they have ever been before and they continue to rise. Rents are higher than they ever were before last year, and there has been the highest level of increases since Residential Tenancy Board records began. Worst of all, the Government's affordable housing targets are simply far too low. The Government is not meeting those targets. They are the worst targets to date.

Increasingly, we are seeing that the affordable homes that the Government is delivering are not affordable. In my constituency, there are affordable purchase homes under the Government's affordable purchase scheme with an all-in price to the buyer of €437,000. Only last week, the Land Development Agency announced new homes for Citywest, which is now in my constituency. The starter prices are: €1,400 a month for a one-bedroom home; €1,600 for a two-bedroom home; and almost €1,700 for a three-bedroom home. These amounts are higher than those being paid by renters in the area at present.

To add insult to injury, just as people thought that they were no longer competing with funds to buy homes, we see again, as Deputy Doherty has outlined, a fund buying homes in north County Dublin and not only overpaying and pushing up the price and preventing young people from purchasing but also charging €3,100 a month for three-bedroom homes in the suburbs. That is not a good way to run our housing system.

What I do not understand about the Government's position is this. In 2021 it stated that it wanted to stamp out this practice. It stated that it wanted to stop funds from block purchasing houses and duplexes out from under the noses of families. We told the Government the stamp duty rate was not sufficiently high. We told them it needed to be higher. Evidence has proven that. It does not matter if it is 1%, 2% or 3% of transactions. At a time of such limited supply, any home that is bought up by a fund that should have gone to an owner-occupier is one home too many.

I am genuinely surprised that the Government has not done the honest thing, which is to come in and say that it did not get it right. The Government did not set the rate high enough. Given that its objective in 2021 was allegedly in line with ours, which is to stamp out this practice, the Government should have said that now is the time to increase the rate. That would have been the honest thing to do. Instead, what the Government will do is refuse to make the change, homes will continue be sold to funds, they will charge extortionate rents on which they pay no tax on their rent roll or capital gains and this will continue to distort our housing market. I am not surprised that the Government has taken this decision. People out there desperate to own their own homes or pay affordable rents are watching. They know whose side the Government is clearly on.

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